Between Labour and Love: The Re‐erotization of Home‐making in Egalitarian Couples within a Nordic Context

Abstract

This article addresses a proposed rupture between duty and desire in late modern intimacy: the optimistic account of liberated love propagated by Anthony Giddens (1991, 1992) on the one hand, and the feminist critique, among others presented by Lynn Jamieson (1998, 1999) on the other, that emphasizes a widened gap between ideals of pure love and a persistent gendered division of work. Drawing on a longitudinal study of egalitarian couples in Norwegian society, the article outlines an alternative picture. Faced with a noticeable erotization of work and an accentuated focus on the child as a project, neither negotiations for a fair distribution of practical duties nor the mutual disclosure and passion seem to provide the glue in these couples. Instead, the tensions between domestic responsibilities, heavy work requirements, and high expectations on emotional closeness seem to produce new configurations of commitment and desire. Rather than untying domestic necessities from passionate love, these couples transform the timebind into a narrative about shared projects. The achievements of these shared projects are twofold: they liberate the process of home‐making from the gendered narratives, and they permeate these de‐gendered narratives with a romantic spirit. By making these joint projects a focal point in their everyday lives, these couples have managed to reformulate both love and home‐making in a way that produces a committed “in‐between” in their intimate relationship, the overarching principle that is missing in Giddens' concept of confluent love.

Notes

1. For the four men that were re‐interviewed, and their partners, the fulfilment of the criteria of “high degree of equal domestic participation” was the fact that the men had taken a six‐month parental leave in 1990, three years before this was promoted as an advisable thing to do for men by the introduction of the “father's quota”. The remaining five couples were selected due to their appearance among their own network as a couple practising a noticeably “high degree of equal domestic participation”.